Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, November 7, 2000

2000-11-07 04:00:00 PDT Regional -- Hundreds of residents of San Mateo and Contra Costa counties cast their ballots into cyberspace this election year as part of a statewide Internet voting experiment.

In what was undoubtedly a glimpse into the future of voting, 1,372 women, men, teenagers and children had taken part in the Internet shadow vote in the Bay Area by the time the state-sponsored trial closed the last of its polls on Friday.

The vote, which also took place in San Diego and Sacramento counties, put to the test a handful of online balloting vendors, including Election Systems & Software of Omaha, SafeVote and VoteHere, and helped the state inch closer to its eventual goal of allowing voters to make their election picks from anyplace on the planet.

The process mimics paper balloting and sign-in procedures as much as possible but allows for significantly faster tallies. Although the votes will not be counted for the real election, online voting advocates say fulfilling one's civic duty from the comfort of a home computer is merely a matter of time.

"In the Bay Area and throughout California, we're ready to accept online voting," said Steve Weir, head of Contra Costa County's elections department. "It's going to come slower than the consumer wants, but it's coming. No doubt about that."

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San Mateo County, for its part, opened its first booth for online voting in Daly City early last month. The mock polls were open to anyone who was interested, including minors and those not registered to vote. One high school teacher in San Mateo rewarded his students with extra credit for taking part in the experiment.

Shoring up the fall in voting participation is the main thrust of the mock vote, according to election officials.

In San Mateo County, for example, voter registration remains five percentage points above the state average but has steadily fallen off since the 1960 presidential election when more than 90 percent of the nation's citizens turned out to vote. Four years ago, voter turnout was little more than 71 percent.

According to 1998 statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 70 percent of people older than 55 and 62 percent of 35- to 44-year-olds are registered to vote. Meantime, fewer than half of those ages 24 to 34, and less than 40 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds are registered.

It is to those younger constituents, officials argue, that Internet voting would be most attractive. The theory, they say, is that the nation's wired electorate might vote in greater numbers if they could do so via the Web rather than be restricted to 13 hours on a given Tuesday.

Indeed, of 539 people surveyed, 82 percent indicated that they would vote online if given the opportunity, according to a report released in October by Active Research, a Burlingame company.

Of those asked, 63 percent said they would vote in more elections if they could do so on the Internet. Only 15 percent said they would continue to cast their ballots by conventional means.

"We're working longer and longer hours, people are more and more busy yet we keep holding on to the old model of polling booths and assuming that it will continue to work. Obviously, it's not working," said David Greenberg, Active Research's vice president of marketing.

Perhaps most telling, Greenberg said, is that 74 percent of people between 25 and 34 surveyed said that they would vote more often if they were given the choice to cast their ballot on the Web.

Still, critics of online voting have questioned the Internet's privacy and security from vendors or hackers who could illegally track votes or manipulate the outcome of an election.

The so-called digital divide is likewise a concern because elections may slant toward candidates favored by those who could easily vote by computer from home. And in the absence of public polling places, a spouse could pressure a person voting at home or a supervisor might pressure an employee voting from a computer at work.

But a jump in the number of people opting to vote absentee is further proof that a swifter, more convenient voting system is needed to lure more voters, election officials said.

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As of yesterday, 88,509 requests for absentee ballots had been processed by San Mateo County elections workers -- up 16,509 from the total counted at the same time four years ago. Slocum is expecting 82 percent of registered voters to turn out today. If all absentee ballots are cast, they will make up more than 30 percent of the county's total vote.

Absentee ballots will likewise make up 22 and 30 percent of the total vote in Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties, respectively.

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